I enjoyed making these, but I don't think they are a good activity for younger kids. There's a lot of twisting and turning and trimming. The task is made all the more difficult by the bendy nature of the material used. I feel that it might prove frustrating for those under the age of ten.

I used the tutorial as more of a guide. The technique was helpful, but I didn't use the pattern. Instead, I cut longer "branches" and trimmed them when finished. I liked the results much better.

I also tried this with both regular pipe cleaners and the tinsel pipe cleaners. I found that the tinsel were much easier to work with, mainly because of their stiffness.

I decided to make the trees ahead of time so The Offspring could focus on the decorating.

The beads were brought out and I let them have at it.

The decision was made to focus on a single color for each tree.

The girl chose pink.

Shocking.

The Boy went with blue.

The Girl found this activity very much to her liking, her liking being all things sparkly.

The Boy humored me.

The Mr. got in on the act as well.

He drilled a hole in some wooden blocks for a base.

And then he humored me by agreeing that they were, in fact, the cutest things ever.